By Sister Michele Morek

Don’t you love greeting the New Year with hope? We are people of hope, so it might be surprising that one of Saint Angela’s most difficult sayings for some of us can be: “Have Hope and Firm Faith in God!” It’s easy to follow her advice when things are going well, but …

For example, I trust water. I have trusted it to hold me up since I learned to float on my back in my uncle’s ranch pond. But sometimes my trust wavers.

In the varsity swimming pool at Notre Dame, I would paddle back and forth across the width of the pool in the six-foot section, afraid to swim in the end marked “22 feet!” The lifeguard would gently remind me that deep water holds you up just as well as six feet does.

Fast-forward another 25 years. I am snorkeling over the colorful corals of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. My face is just four feet above the stunning wonderland of corals, reef fish, sponges, and sea fans, and I am completely lost in the beauty. Whoa! I swim off over the edge of the reef, and I am looking straight down into 100 feet of water!

I panic and frantically back-pedal to the safety of four feet, before I remember the lesson of the lifeguard. God’s hand is under me (in the form of water molecules) just as surely at 100 feet as at four. We can have “hope and firm faith in God” when our personal waters are dark, deep, and murky, just as much as we do when lying on the beach in the sun!

Was there ever a time when you were unsure of the supporting hand of God, or felt that you were swimming off over the edge?

Happy New Year!